Signals Are Crossed at Hollywood Park

Welcome to the Friday night fight.

In this corner, weighing in with a fistful of promises and $20 million in good-faith money . . . unbeaten and untied in head-to-head business brawls . . . the savior of Hollywood Park . . . Randall Dee Hubbard.

And in this corner, weighing in with surprising unity . . . sporting a record of nosebleeds and split decisions . . . thoroughbred trainers.

At stake is the future of Hollywood Park’s advertised schedule of Friday night racing, which has been jeopardized by a threatened boycott by thoroughbred horse owners and their trainers. A richer prize, however, could be control of the game itself.

Amid fierce competition for the leisure dollar, Hollywood Park is banking on Friday night programs to invigorate business and attract a younger audience.

“We’ve lost a whole generation of people who have not been exposed to this game,” said Don Robbins, Hollywood Park’s president. “Walk through the racetrack during the week and it’s appalling, really scary. Some of these people you want to pinch, just to make sure they’re alive.”

Hubbard and his board of directors--which includes John Forsythe, Allen Paulson and Bruce McNall--are determined to offer nine thoroughbred races every Friday of the Hollywood Park meeting, which will open its 13-week season Wednesday.

And during those Friday night programs, Hollywood also plans to offer more than 20 televised races from a quarter horse meeting at Los Alamitos and a harness meeting in Sacramento. There will be betting opportunities every 10 or 12 minutes.

Harness and quarter horse betting will be available at only 50 of the 620 mutuel windows, though, Hollywood officials say. Those races will be shown on only 28 of Hollywood’s 700 television screens and will not be carried on the track public-address system.

Many owners and most trainers oppose night racing as disruptive and non-traditional, but most are willing to accept it. Their ranks have closed dramatically, though, in opposition to TV betting on the other breeds during the live thoroughbred program.

“It would be the beginning of the end of thoroughbred racing as we know it,” said Gary Jones, trainer of Santa Anita Handicap winner Best Pal.

Such statements baffle Hubbard, who took control of Hollywood Park in February of 1991 after a bitter battle with the previous board chairman, Marje Everett.

“The issue is not the cross-simulcasting (of other breeds),” Hubbard said. “There are just a lot of trainers who do not want to run on Friday night. But they knew they couldn’t stop the Friday nights, and now they’ve got a cause.”

Jones disagreed.

“Had (Hubbard) not come in with the cross-signaling from other breeds, we’d be racing on Friday nights over there,” Jones said. “I’ve never seen trainers more united, and my owners are backing me 100%.”

At issue, say the most vocal trainers, is the direction of the sport in an age of increased pressure from other forms of gambling. Beyond Hubbard’s intent to mingle various forms of horse racing under the same roof, they are uncomfortable with his connection to dog racing and quarter horse racing in other states. They envision the Friday night format as the first step toward a casino atmosphere with nonstop action.

“The next thing you’ll see at the track is sports betting, then card rooms, and soon racetracks won’t in any way resemble what they were,” trainer Eddie Gregson said. “They’ll be gambling emporiums, and horse racing will just happen to be going on there, along with a lot of other activities. To me, that’s totally nauseating.”

Many owners and trainers recoiled at Hubbard’s recent statements supporting an “equal rights” law that would put racetracks on the same footing with Indian reservations when it came to gambling. In California, such a law would allow tracks to offer bingo and cards without approval from local municipalities.

“It’s simple mathematics,” owner-trainer Brian Sweeney said. “If 10,000 people show up with $2 million in their pockets to bet, any veering off to bet on some other game is going to cost my game money.”

Simulcasting laws, however, spread the money around to the tracks, horsemen and the state, no matter what the breed. Furthermore, Hubbard is sweetening the Friday night pot with inducements, among them a subsidy to owners of $110 per horse, free meals for stable help and a guarantee of an additional $1.3 million in purses by the end of the meeting. He also has promised to route the track’s share of Friday night harness and quarter horse bets back into thoroughbred purses.

As for possible competition from other forms of gaming, Hubbard said: “I think the horsemen better get tuned in and figure out how to get a piece of the action. Sooner or later, the way Indian gaming is spreading, the way the video (card games) are spreading, the way casino gambling is spreading, it’s going to come.

“If horse racing does not get a piece of it, they’re not going to be able to compete. I know that scares people. But it’s not me saying it. It’s being said all over the country.”

Hubbard says he is shocked that a boycott is being threatened at all. Since his group took control of Hollywood Park, it has spent more than $20 million on improvements--a popular outdoor paddock, new barns and a stable cafeteria, a playground for children and attractive renovations throughout the grandstand.

Perhaps as a result, business increased at Hollywood Park last year, despite the recession.

“Hubbard gained a lot of gold stars with what he’s done with the track,” said John Mabee, California’s leading owner and breeder, who opposes the mixed betting. “But no matter what happens, there will be scars left over this.”

Owners and trainers are a notoriously fragmented group, loosely represented by the California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. and the Southern California Thoroughbred Trainers Assn. They are a far cry from being the typical labor side of an issue involving track management.

“We’re perceived as powerless because we aren’t labor,” trainer Darrell Vienna said. “We can’t strike. We can only act as individuals. Obviously, it takes a pretty big issue to get a group so diverse to take a stand.”

The last time local owners and trainers staged an effective boycott was in 1985 at Del Mar, over the issue of undocumented stable help. Backstretch raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service galvanized trainers into a boycott that shut down Del Mar for one card and severely curtailed another.

“And you know what?” Jones said. “We won that one. The licensing program got whipped into shape, and you haven’t heard anything about it since then.”

Trainer Sandy Shulman, for one, sees no correlation.

“I was totally in favor of the (Del Mar) boycott,” Shulman said. “But it wasn’t so much against management. It was against governmental agencies.

“This is different. It’s a matter of pure economics. If business is better, there will be more money for the owners and the trainers. If Hubbard doesn’t benefit, then I’m sure he’ll cut it out.”

Shulman has committed to racing on Friday nights, but he is in a small minority willing to speak out in Hubbard’s favor. Among the leading trainers who have voiced opposition are Ron McAnally, Neil Drysdale, Charlie Whittingham, Bobby Frankel, John Sadler, Brian Mayberry, Dave Hofmans, Donn Luby, Jerry Fanning, Ron Ellis and Lewis Cenicola, in addition to Jones, Vienna and Gregson. That group alone combined for more than 1,300 starters at the Santa Anita meeting that ended Monday.

Several top trainers have maintained neutral positions in public, among them Jack Van Berg and Wayne Lukas. Lukas, who is at Churchill Downs preparing two horses for the Kentucky Derby, worried that this was a bad time for such a confrontation.

“In today’s climate, I don’t know that we can get too uppity,” Lukas said. “I want to be a team player and support my colleagues. But I also want to make sure I’m doing what’s best for the game and for the owners. And I’m an owner, too.”

Ian Jory is another trainer wrestling with the issue.

“Although I’m very much against the mixing of signals, if they go on strike, I’m not going with them,” he said. “The owners are the ones paying the bills. If I say I’m not racing, I can’t blame them for moving their horse to another trainer.”

Richard Mandella, who trains horses for both Hubbard and Hollywood board member Herman Sarkowsky, is amazed that the situation has come down to a possible boycott.

“I was on record as being against Friday night racing from the beginning,” Mandella said. “But now that it’s a reality, I don’t see how you can be against it just because of the mixed signals. There’s nothing to prove that it will have any bad effect on our business.”

Although common in many other parts of the country, big league thoroughbred racing at night is a fairly new phenomenon in Southern California. It started in 1989, when Hollywood Park had a one-shot farewell program for Bill Shoemaker, who was in the midst of his retirement tour. The track offered four Friday night programs in 1990 and six last year, during Hubbard’s first season.

Friday night business has shown marked improvement compared to Friday afternoon figures. A study financed by Hollywood Park and the CHBPA recommended a full season of Friday night racing for 1992, based on a “net gain in attendance (of) 7,000 per week, with a minimal cannibalization of Saturday and/or Sunday patronage.”

Hollywood and horsemen were haggling over the number of Friday night programs when, during a meeting on March 18, the subject of non-thoroughbred simulcasts came up.

“There were rumors (Hubbard) would be bringing in the quarter horse and harness signals, so we asked,” CHBPA attorney Robert Forgnone said. “He confirmed them.”

Nine days later, the California Horse Racing Board approved the Hollywood Park plan over the objections of the horsemen’s group. The vote was 4-2.

“After analyzing the data, there appeared to be a little risk, but the possibilities of bettering racing exceeded the risk,” said board member Ralph Scurfield, who voted in favor.

But board member Donald Valpredo, a thoroughbred owner and breeder, voted against the Hollywood Park plan.

“The numbers they presented were hard to refute, but I don’t believe we had enough time to go over them,” Valpredo said. “We were given some handout sheets that day by (Hollywood) management that were informative. But I wish I’d had a week or so to study them.”

Some owners and trainers direct their wrath at the racing board, accusing it of rubber-stamping the wishes of powerful track owners.

“I don’t like to see Hubbard and the racing board conspiring to deprive the horsemen of their rights,” owner Mace Siegel said. “As far as I’m concerned, they (the board) are the enemy.

“You’ve got to show them they don’t run the game,” Siegel added. “The horsemen run the game. And the only way to show that is to make an effective boycott of Friday night racing.”

Hubbard has no intention of giving up Friday night racing, and says he is obligated to accept the signals from the harness and quarter horse meetings.

“When we took over Hollywood Park, there were several lawsuits for many millions of dollars that the harness industry had filed against the track,” Hubbard said. “Our legal counsel advised us to settle.

“Part of our settlement was that we agreed to take their signal at Hollywood Park. It never dawned on me that anybody would have any concern.”

As for the quarter horse races, management at Los Alamitos is adamant that the signals be exchanged on Friday nights, when the Orange County track bucks Hollywood head to head.

“Our position was to try an experiment to see if all the breeds could work together,” said Jim Smith, president of the Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn. “Under no circumstances would we allow a situation where they bet on thoroughbreds at Los Al, but did not bet on quarter horses at Hollywood Park.”

So the lines are drawn. Entries for this Friday night will be taken Wednesday morning at Hollywood Park, and Hubbard insists that there is enough support for his position.

“If you talk to one guy, he’s concerned about the cross-simulcasting,” Hubbard said. “Another guy is concerned about the dogs. They’re using innuendoes and scare tactics with no facts.

“I’ve had numerous trainers tell me they’re going to enter,” Hubbard added. “We don’t know that there is going to be a boycott.”